Holiday from Hell
by An Abandoned Ray of Hope
Summary: [mild AU]Dumbledore suggests a eight-day-long Holiday party to renew their ties with the Ministry of Magic, chaos rules supreme, especially with the twenty students remaining at Hogwarts... Give it a chance. And remember, you review me, I review you.


**Revised:** _August 07, 2004_

**Warning:** _This is AU, the universes splitting at the end of the Triwizard tournament. Basically, Cedric didn't die, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix never happened. OOC, in the future.  
_  
**Disclaimer:** _Harry Potter, nor any of the other shameless references in here belong to any of the producers of this fanfic._  
  
**Holidays from Hell **

**Part One:**

**The News/The Road to Hell**

'Twas the night before Christmas, and, all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a...

Oh, screw that.

It was only December 21st. Plenty of mice that had snuck into the drafty castle were awake and being chased furiously by the only two cats whose owners - one a student, the other a cranky old man who was miserable and wished the rest of the world to be miserable as well - had remained at school. One a small, heavy-lidded mangy-looking cat, with black fur was missing in large patches and a notch in an ear, as well as a missing eye. The other was a heavy ginger cat, looking extraordinarily like a small completely orange tiger. It was the very first day of the winter vacation at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The few students who had stayed of were waking up, cussing, freezing to death in the castle, all huddled in common rooms, the norm for winter vacation. One particular girl, raven-haired and brown eyed was the only one left in her Ravenclaw Sixth Year dorm was singing in Japanese. Horribly. 

_"Kaze ga yaseta kotobani,"_ Cho Chang sang to herself in her first language, intending to run a hair brush a hundred times through her cute, chin-length bob. _"Oyoida kokoro."_ Bored. she set the brush down after seven hurried strokes, and picked up her lipgloss. _"Kumoga hakobu ashitani,"_ She traced the applicator over her lips, smiling at the very pretty girl in the mirror. _"hazunda koe."_ [1]  
  
Satisfied and finally stopping with her out-of-key, overly-loud and perky version of Final Fantasy X's Suteki Da Ne ("Isn't it Beautiful"), she turned and flounced from the room. Her hair fluttered as she jumped down the last few steps. There was a gaggle of fourth years hanging around. She switched to English. "Good morning, everybody!"  
  
None of them noticed her.  
  
_'God, this sucks.'_ "I said, 'good morning!'"  
  
Silence.  
  
"GOOD MORNING, ASSHOLES!" She shrieked.  
  
_"Guten morgen."_ a crimson-haired German girl muttered without raising her eyes, lazing on a low sofa of midnight blue.  
  
"Hi!" _'Uh...shit...what's her name? Carrie? Corry?'  
_  
"Morning," A boy called from a small table.  
  
"Hey, Ethan!"  
  
"Good morning," his soft-spoken twin sister whispered, bent over a thick book.  
  
"Hi, Amina!"  
  
"Nice PJs." the redhead grinned broadly.  
  
Ethan frowned, "Adele, that's mean."  
  
Cho looked down, a furious blush spreading across her face.  
  
She was still wearing her pajamas. Even worse, her blindingly lime green Pokemon pajamas with the little Evees and Pokeballs sprinkled across them.  
  
The ones with the feet.  
  
The ones that her older sister, Hanako, had given her as a joke, saying she was small enough to wear them - Cho barely broke 4'11".  
  
Executing the cool confidence that had led her to become one of the most popular girls in school, she rose her head, meeting the redhead's blue eyes calmly. "Are you going to give me my Pikachu ones back? Or have you not got the... _fluids_ off?" she asked delicately.  
  
"Bitch," the girl hummed.  
  
"Oh, that's right, your fat ass can't fit into them." Cho grinned.  
  
"Slut."  
  
"The hell's a Pikachu?" A first year boy called.  
  
Cho blinked. Most first year boys were terrified of her. "Mind your own business," she chided. She mounted the girl's stairs to go and change. On the seventh step, she collided with two kids, both in pajamas, but holding towels, spare clothes and their shower kits.  
  
One girl cowered appropriately.  
  
"Sorry," Cho said in the most apologetic tone she could manage. It sounded like she was rather bored.  
  
"Sorry." the other girl said at the exact same second. "Jinx!" She giggled wildly.  
  
Cho knew what she meant, she had been that age, too. However, when she opened her mouth to speak, she found that no sound came out. Her hands flew to her mouth.  
  
The girl's friend stopped cowering, "Casey, what's 'jinx'?"  
  
"It's a silence spell used when someone says the same thing as you! It can only wear off when someone else says their name five times in a row! My brother created the spell! Cool, huh?"  
  
"Yeah!" her friend gushed as they walked past.  
  
Cho wasn't listening to the brats; she was too busy trying to figure out why she couldn't talk.  
  
The most popular, vibrant, outgoing, cheerful, verbose, wordy, outgoing, talkative girl in school had finally been shut up.

* * *

"Well, dear students," Dumbledore greeted, looking around the two tables. "since we at Hogwarts - hoggy warty Hogwarts - "  
  
_"Teach us something, please!"_ Fred yelled.  
  
_"Whether we be old and bald, or young with scabby knees!"_ George replied.  
  
The twins stood, joining hands and dancing like drunken elephants. _"Our heads could do with filling, with some interesting stuff..."_  
  
McGonagall leapt to her feet, proving that hell hath no fury a woman scorned. She hated that bloody school song! "God, _shut _up!"  
  
Silence reigned supreme over the relatively small group of students.  
  
A lone cricket that had nested in a rafter above chirped.  
  
McGonagall sighed, content.  
  
Until Hagrid broke the silence. "You wanna learn something?" he demanded.  
  
"No," Draco Malfoy muttered, folding his arms.  
  
"Why not." Blaise Zabini said with as much [non]enthusiasm. She frowned, looking at her male counterpart. "Stop touching my ass, playboy." She hissed with a ringing slap.  
  
He was her clone, with modified DNA - or she was his, it was hard to keep it straight. Maybe they were twins; maybe they were born in a lab. Maybe they were siblings, maybe they were complete rivals. Maybe they were all four, considering their grandparents' - Lucrecia and Hojo Zabini's - experiments with DNA testing.  
  
"Ew," Pansy wrinkled her nose. "Incest."  
  
"Narcissism." Draco corrected.  
  
Female!Blaise frowned, "He's not even hot! Let's go back to the Taco Bell sauces - mild, yeah; hot, maybe; but definitely not fire."  
  
Male!Blaise's hands slipped beneath the table, and he chortled. "Lavender..." he sighed warmly.  
  
"_Ewww_!" Female!Blaise hissed, brushing back her long hair, "You better not be touching her! I don't swing that way!"  
  
"Well, tough, 'cause I do!"  
  
"Shut up!"  
  
"If you don't then how come you were writing all those letters to Pansy?"  
  
"We're friends, dumb ass!"  
  
"Words of looooove!"  
  
Hagrid interrupted their conversation. "'ere's today's question! I 'ave a 'angover! Who knows what that means?"  
  
"You're pissed drunk?" Draco suggested. "Like House Elves at New Year's?" he added thoughtfully.  
  
"Close, but no cigar!"  
  
"You puked?" Ron asked.  
  
"Wrong!"  
  
"You need more booze?" Snape ventured.  
  
Dumbledore looked at him sternly, "Sever- "  
  
"What?" Snape yelled, eyes suddenly shifty. "I don't drink! I don't... what? Stop looking at me! I wasn't summoning the devil in the teacher's lounge! I'm not a spy! Why are you all looking at me? I was never in cahoots with Voldie! I didn't have a child with my greatest teenage rival's wife! I'm going back to my ten-watt dungeon!" He walked as fast as he could out of the Hall without actually running.  
  
"Did he just say _'in cahoots'_?" Someone wondered, blinking furiously.  
  
"Who knows the answer?" Hagrid bellowed, ignoring all that happened.  
  
"You're like my flabby uncle and beat the shit out of people if they don't give you coffee?" Harry inquired.  
  
Everyone turned to look at the Boy-Who-Lived-A-Crappy-Pointless-Angst- riddled-Existence.  
  
"It's true, it's true!"  
  
Everyone was still looking at him.  
  
"I only got to the buzz stage! Dudley drinks too!" Harry insisted. "He wears whitey tighties, which the Tighty Whitey Beat says are for kid drinkers! I don't drink. I wear boxers!" He yanked his up to his ribcage, the faux silk shining under the lights.  
  
"Boy," drawled a voice, "If you want to have children, go into the bathroom and fix those."  
  
"What the hell? Snape?" Harry turned just in time to see billowing cloth disappearing out the door.  
  
As Harry fussed with his underwear, Hermione raised her hand, waving it about, ever attentive, "So, Hagrid, what was the answer? Were you drunk?"  
  
Hagrid beamed behind his beard. "I wasn't drunk today, 'ermy! I was drunk yesterday!"  
  
At the teacher's table, McGonagall twitched dangerously.  
  
"I can see it," Trelawney breathed, "He is going to be murdered violently, that Rubeus Hagrid."  
  
"By me." McGonagall muttered, eyes darting around.  
  
"Oh, Minerva!" Trelawney pulled the raven-haired woman into a hug, knocking her to the floor.  
  
"Ow."  
  
"You believe in me! I never was so proud of you, sister dear! Even when my husband died and you and that Tom boy came to the funeral and called him a numb-nut..."  
  
"Tom?" Minerva wondered.  
  
"Oh, how I wish amnesia had never taken hold of you, dearest!"  
  
McGonagall shoved Trelawney as hard as she could. Surprisingly, the force was large enough to cause the "oracle" to go flying through a round cathedral window near the ceiling. "Psycho." She whispered, too soft for the other teachers to hear.  
  
"Two hundred galleons, at least..." Dumbledore sobbed.  
  
"I love you sisssss!" Trelawney cried, "Ohhhh, looook a metal bird with spinning claws! Birds symbolize souls –"  
  
Everyone flinched at the sound of the "metal bird's spinning claws" tearing through skin, muscle and bone.  
  
"Sushi." Cedric laughed.  
  
Head on his shoulder, Cho snickered. The sound never passed her lips, but her shoulders shook wildly.  
  
"Oh, shit." Cedric muttered. "She's dying."  
  
"Dumbledore!" McGonagall hollered, "The announcement!"  
  
"Oh! Right! Sorry! I got lost in the side-plots!" Dumbledore straightened, "Because there's only twenty of you boys and girls staying," He began, "we are having a hootenanny – "  
  
"Party." McGonagall corrected.  
  
"Shindig."  
  
"Gathering."  
  
"Hoedown."  
  
"Dinner-dance."  
  
"Bash."  
  
"Celebration."  
  
"**Box social**," Dumbledore said too firmly to brook an argument, "For _adults only_," He looked pointedly at Fred and George, "to reestablish our ties with the ministry. It will last a whole eight nights from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day, but our guests will probably stay until term begins anew. It's gonna rock! Like a big sleepover for grownups!" He gushed.  
  
Everyone marveled. Because it was Dumbledore, his idea, no matter how ridiculous and farfetched, and his gushing, no matter how immature, was obviously wise and meaningful.  
  
Colin Creevy blinked and asked the apparent question, "Where are they going to stay?"  
  
"In your dormitories, of course!"  
  
"_What_?" Pansy's voice - as it always did when she was startled, bored, whiny, annoying, or excited – came shrilly. "Where the _hell_ will we sleep?"  
  
_'Because you're young and therefore will live longer without resulting in an early death like some of us old folks if you suffer,'_ "Because we trust you all." Dumbledore lied smootly, "we have an empty class room set up for you boys and girls with sleeping bags."  
  
"Awesome!" Cedric beamed, next to Cho.  
  
She giggled, or tried to.  
  
"Cho? Babe? My preciousssssssssssssss? Aren't you excited?"  
  
She nodded mutely.  
  
"Hey, Herm," Ron began, stretching languidly. His arm lingered just above her narrow shoulders.  
  
She lifted her butter knife. "Do you like your arm?"  
  
"Why yes, it is a rather nice, muscley arm, isn't it?" Ron winked.  
  
Hermione tightened her grip on her knife. "Put your arm around me, and I will cut every limb from your body," her gaze drifted meaningfully downward, "Starting with your smallest."  
  
"You mean his little toe?" Neville asked innocently. "'cause I had a dream once that I let spiders eat my toes 'cause they paid fifty cents and I like American Muggle money."  
  
"No, Neville," Hermione said soothingly, in calm and placid tones, "Ron has something even littler than his little toe."  
  
Ron turned pink immediately. His arm lowered, dropping onto the table, rattling silverware.  
  
Fred and George snickered. The last summer, they had taught Ron how to "get girls" using the same book their mom had taught them out of (Molly had used _"How NOT To Teach Your Son About Dating"_ in hopes of keeping her twins "innocent" longer) in hopes of hours of free entertainment of watching their baby brother crash and burn.  
  
So far, Ron had already had his ass kicked thirty-three times by Male!Blaise who was very possessive of the girls he liked. And even some of the prettier boys.  
  
It was great.  
  
For them.  
  
Fred caught Angelina's eye and winked.  
  
It was going to be a great week. 


End file.
